I don’t know if other people have this dream or it’s just people like me who did not graduate high school, but last night I had to go get my diploma at near fifty years old. I didn’t actually get through the doors of the institution in this dream, however. This dream changed its natural course before I got there, and turned into a species of frustration dream.
Originally it was going to be my brother and I going back to high school, and down in San Francisco, so we were going to fly there. But I couldn’t find the plane tickets at the last minute, couldn’t find my brother, and went rampaging around looking for them. Gradually it became clear the reason I couldn’t find anything was that this was a dream, and I had never needed to go back to school, or go anywhere.
Was it a dream though? I didn’t know I was dreaming at the time, only knew that the element where I had to go back to school was false. Competing theories filled my head. Was it a dream I had taken for real, or a delusion? Was I becoming prematurely demented? This was very upsetting, changing things into a nightmare.
At that point it shifted focus into gathering books and papers that had accidentally been left out in the parking lot, not having enough hands, all that kind of shit. But the larger problem remained; I had no idea why I had thought I needed to go back to school, and it tore me up.
As I woke up, I had to pass through a hypnopompic state where the dream still felt real, so I was very focused on figuring out what’s real, like I could reason my way through it instead of just finishing waking up and letting the whole crisis melt away on its own. At least it was much less emotionally intense by that point.
After that I fell asleep again, for a dream where i had a job with nebulous duties and a malevolent boss, which involved a little bit of actual cat herding.
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Hel yeah, I frequently have to go back to school or university in my dreams. Usually it turns out I have yet to take a course I didn’t know about or realize I had skipped classes all year. In one more interesting variant the subject was black magic and the other pupils were a bit creepy – except for a rather attractive dark elf who was on my side.
Mostly the dreams are rather frightening, as I had some serious anxietys concerning my exams. Nearly failed school because of them and still can’t believe I actually managed to finish uni – or did I?
@mordred
I frequently have a very similar dream: even though I have my HS diploma, and subsequent MSc and PhD, I sometimes dream that I accidentally missed one course in high school, so I have to go back and do it or all else is invalidated. Except I’m now wandering the hallways of my old high school, I don’t understand my roster, and I can’t find my classroom.
I’m a fairly lucid dreamer, so this is the point where I can usually decide to go dream about something else, else I’d be wandering the hallways of my old school, lost forever.
I’ve had various such dreams over the years,but the one relatively more recent usually involves my being enrolled in something resembling my old college, and realizing that I have missed months of classes, and have no idea even where the classes are meeting, and for some reason it has suddenly become important to try to catch up, perhaps because finals are coming up or something. It’s not entirely clear what I’ve been doing all this time, but somehow just never went, and lost track. Fortunately when I wake up I remember eventually that I graduated from college already, so since that happened in 1968, it’s probably not too urgent.
At some point, it becomes less stressful to finish the GED paperwork than it is to have the dreams.
i used a GED to get into college, got an associates and a bachelors degree, and i still have the dreams. no escape from the aeternal school.